The Wispr Flow alternative that keeps your voice on your PC

You are on Windows, you like the idea behind Wispr Flow, hold a key, talk, and clean text lands where you were typing, and you are checking the price before you commit. Not just the money: where your voice goes. Wispr Flow's own privacy page says transcription always happens in the cloud, its setup guide makes signing in a step you cannot skip, and its free plan stops at 2,000 words a week on desktop. Deixis does the same hold-a-key job with the recognition running on your own PC, no account, and no cap.

Hold Ctrl+Win, speak, release. The words are typed at your cursor in whatever app has focus, your editor, your terminal, a ticket, a chat, with the clipboard put back the way you left it. Double-tap the key and it keeps listening until you double-tap again. Nothing to sign in to, nothing metered, and everything that runs on your PC is free for as long as you use it.

Wispr Flow is genuinely ahead in a few places: a hundred-plus languages, connections to your calendar and Slack, a dictionary that fills itself in. This page says so plainly further down. But if what you want is dictation that nobody else hears, on your PC, your Mac or your phone, Deixis is the better tool, and here is the case.

Why switch

What you gain, and what you give up

Why Deixis

Your voice never leaves your PC. Speech recognition happens inside the app, on your processor. Wispr Flow's privacy page is direct about the alternative: "Transcription always happens in the cloud." Its security FAQ adds that the service is hosted with a US cloud provider and is not end-to-end encrypted, because the audio has to be decrypted to be transcribed. Deixis has nothing to decrypt anywhere, because nothing was sent. Pull the network cable and it still dictates, records and transcribes meetings, and grabs screens; Wispr Flow's transcription is in the cloud, so it needs a connection.
One tool, on every device you own. Windows, Mac, iPhone and Android, with the same on-device speech recognition on all four; your audio never leaves any of them. On the phone it is a keyboard on the iPhone and a floating microphone bubble on Android, and everything that runs on the device is free there too, with no weekly allowance to watch.
No account and no word cap, for anything local. Wispr Flow's setup guide makes signing in, with Google, Apple, Microsoft, SSO, or an email and password, a step before you dictate a word, and its free plan then stops at 2,000 words a week on desktop; past that it is $15 per user a month, or $12 a month billed yearly. Deixis never asks, and never counts. Install it, download the speech model once, and you are dictating, with no meter on anything that runs on your device: dictation, hands-free notes, screen grabs, meetings, the dictionary and all the vocabulary packs. The only time it wants an email address is if you choose to start the trial of the cloud extras, and that is a six-digit code, no card, no password. Pro, at $49 a year, buys those extras with nothing to set up.
Context without a screenshot. Wispr Flow's Context Awareness help page says the feature is on by default on Mac and Windows, and lists what it sends to Wispr with each dictation request: the text in the box before, at and after your cursor, on-screen text, file and variable names in coding apps, the apps in your session, a screenshot, and conversation history. The same page calls Windows support partial, names conversation context, element descriptions and IDE handling as Mac-only today, and does not say which of the rest the Windows app sends. Deixis is field-aware too, but what leaves is smaller and named: the transcript, your vocabulary, the name of the app and the field, and the last thing you dictated into that field, and only once you have switched cloud cleanup on. Never the window title, never the text on your screen, never a screenshot, never the audio.
Nothing trains on you. Wispr Flow's help centre says "Improve the model for everyone" is pre-selected during onboarding, and that with it on, your dictation audio, transcripts and edits may be used to train its models. Deixis has no such switch because there is nothing behind it: no telemetry, no analytics, no training data, no account to attach any of it to.
Cleanup on your terms. Out of the box, Deixis tidies dictation on your PC with rules, no provider and no key. Want a language model to polish every sentence? One setting: Deixis's cloud, a model on your own machine, or your own key. And you choose how often, When it helps, Every time, or Never.
Meetings that know who is talking, on your PC. Wispr Flow's notetaker identifies speakers, but its pricing page says it is Mac only, and its privacy page says transcription always happens in the cloud. Deixis records a meeting with Ctrl+Win+M, your microphone and what comes through the speakers, and transcribes it on your PC as it runs. You name the people in it, and voice identification tells the remote voices apart; once you have named a voice, Deixis recognises that person in later meetings. The voiceprint is a mathematical fingerprint that stays on your machine, is never uploaded, and can be deleted per person. On Android, meetings are recorded from the phone's microphone and transcribed on the phone, with notes.
Screen grabs, annotation and screen recording, on the same key. Ctrl+Win+S freezes the screen, you drag a region, add arrows, boxes, numbered steps or a blur. Ctrl+Win+V records the screen to a video, narrated when a microphone is set up for it. And every note, transcript, grab, recording and setting sits in one folder as ordinary files you own: back it up, search it, uninstall Deixis tomorrow and every word is still there.

Where Wispr Flow still wins

A hundred-plus languages. Its pricing page lists speech-to-text across 100+ languages on every plan, the free one included. Deixis ships English speech models; if you dictate in another language, Wispr Flow is the one that will understand you.
Connections to your calendar, Slack and AI tools. Listed on its pricing page for every plan. Deixis's integrations are webhooks and buttons that you set up yourself, pointed at URLs you own.
A dictionary that fills itself in. Its data-controls page describes an option that watches your edits and adds corrected spellings to your dictionary automatically, and its Pro plan shares a dictionary and snippets across a team. In Deixis you add a word yourself, one key press, and the dictionary is a file on your machine.

What you get

More than dictation. One key, and everything behind it.

Hold the key and press a letter: free mode, a grab, a meeting, a recording, a translation, your own buttons. All of it on your own device, all of it free, none of it behind an account.

The Deixis panel tethered to the caret in a code editor, listening — Dictation, where your cursor is

Hold a key, speak, release. Clean, punctuated text lands in whatever has focus, on your PC, your Mac and your phone, with your clipboard handed back.

A finished free-mode note with two captured references interleaved with the narration — Free mode: talk and point

Narrate for as long as you like while you grab a region, pick a button on screen or take a selection. One note, what you said interleaved with what you pointed at, pasted where you finish and saved as Markdown.

A frozen screen with a dashed selection, numbered steps, an arrow and a pixelated patch — Screen grabs, annotated

Freeze every screen at the keypress, drag a region, add arrows, boxes, text and numbered steps, and pixelate what is private. Saved as a PNG that stays editable.

The page Deixis writes for a shared recording: a short link, a title, a summary and the video — Screen recording, shared as a link

Record the screen with your narration. The recording writes itself up with a title, chapters and a summary, and from your Deixis account it shares as a link anyone can open without one. The Loom you can stop paying for.

A meeting transcript with timestamps and named speakers, and a level meter — Meetings, no bot, names included

Your microphone and the other side, transcribed on your machine while the call runs. Deixis tells the voices apart and remembers the ones you name, and never uploads a voice.

A custom button definition, a webhook delivery and the vocabulary packs — Your own buttons and workflows

Add a button to the palette: it gets the note on stdin and types back whatever it prints. Send finished notes to any URL you own. Chain steps: read the text off a screenshot, translate it, summarise it, post it.

Side by side

Wispr Flow and Deixis, side by side

Row	Deixis	Wispr Flow
Runs on	Windows 10 and 11 (any 64-bit PC from 2013 on), Mac (Apple Silicon), iPhone (as a keyboard) and Android (a dictation bubble in any app, plus meetings). One engine on all four, and audio never leaves the device.	Windows 10 or 11 (x64 only, no ARM), macOS 12 or later, iOS, Android
Speech recognition happens	On your own device, inside the app, on every platform. Your audio never leaves it.	In the cloud
AI cleanup happens	On your device, with no provider at all. Or, if you want more, Deixis's cloud, your own Ollama, or your own key. Your choice, in one setting.	In the cloud
Leaves your machine	Text only, and only once you switch a cloud feature on. Never audio, never screenshots, never window titles.	Audio, text, screenshots
Account needed	None, ever, for anything that runs on your device. The cloud extras have a seven-day trial you start with an email code. No card.	Required
Price	Free forever for everything local, meetings included. Pro is $49 a year for the cloud extras with nothing to set up.	Free tier: 2,000 words a week on desktop, 1,000 a week on iPhone, unlimited on Android; $15 a month; $144 a year
Your transcripts live	In plain files, in one folder you own and can back up. Uninstall Deixis and every note is still readable.	On your device and in the cloud
Make it yours	Add your own buttons that run a script, send finished notes to any URL you own, and switch on vocabulary packs for your field.	A personal dictionary and snippets, an auto-add-to-dictionary option that learns from your edits, and connections to calendar, Slack and AI tools listed on its pricing page. Pro adds a shared dictionary and snippets for a team.

Wispr Flow facts from wisprflow.ai, its privacy policy, policy, security, context, storage, controls, setup, requirements and app, read on 5 September 2026. “Not documented” means those pages did not say.

Two settings decide what Wispr keeps. Dictation Cloud Storage, a setting under Data and Privacy, stores transcripts, audio, dictation history, Notetaker and personalised speech models on Wispr's servers when it is on; the desktop history otherwise stays on the device. Improve the model for everyone is pre-selected during onboarding; on, dictation audio, transcripts and edits may be used to train its models. Context Awareness is on by default on Mac and Windows and can be switched off under Settings → Data and Privacy; its help page lists a screenshot among the context sent with each dictation request, describes Windows support as partial, names conversation context, element descriptions and IDE-specific handling as Mac-only today, and does not say which of the other items the Windows app sends. The Notetaker is Mac only, per the pricing page. The annual figure is the pricing page's $12 per user per month on annual billing, multiplied by twelve and quoted here as the yearly total; monthly billing is $15.

What leaves your machine, and what leaves theirs

Deixis publishes every byte it sends, as a table, because there is so little of it. Here is that table beside what Wispr Flow's own pages say.

What	Deixis	Wispr Flow
Audio	Never. Recognition happens inside the app on your device; the recording, the model and the transcript stay there.	Your dictation audio. The privacy page says transcription always happens in the cloud; the security FAQ says the service is hosted with a major US cloud provider and is not end-to-end encrypted, because the audio has to be decrypted to transcribe it.Wispr's cloud · every dictation
The dictated text	The sentence you just dictated, your vocabulary, and your previous sentence in that fieldthe endpoint you chose · only with a cloud endpoint set, and by default only when the local rules are not enough	The transcript comes back from the cloud. With Dictation Cloud Storage on, transcripts, audio, dictation history and personalised speech models are stored on Wispr's servers; with Improve the model for everyone on, audio, transcripts and edits may be used to train its models.Wispr's servers · every dictation; training is chosen during onboarding, pre-selected, and cloud storage is a setting under Data and Privacy
Context around the text	The names of the app and the field the text is going into. Never the window title, never a screenshot.the same endpoint · with that request	With Context Awareness on, the default on Mac and Windows, the help page says context is sent to Wispr with each dictation request: app info, the text in the box before, at and after the cursor, on-screen text, variable and file names in coding apps, your user identifier within the app, the apps in your current session, a screenshot, and conversation history. Password fields, numeric-only fields and browser URL bars are excluded. Windows support is described as partial: conversation context, element descriptions and IDE-specific handling are Mac-only today, and the page does not say which of the other items the Windows app sends.Wispr · with each dictation request, unless Privacy Mode is on or you turn Context Awareness off under Settings → Data and Privacy
Telemetry and analytics	None. No account, no telemetry, no analytics, no crash reports.	The privacy policy says third-party web analytics such as Google Analytics may be used on its Services; it does not itemise what the desktop app itself reports.Google Analytics · not stated
Update check	Nothing but the request; the version check happens on your PCapi.deixis-voice.com · every launch, and when you ask in Settings	not documented
Model download	Nothing but the requesthuggingface.co · once, when you press Download on first run	Nothing to download: transcription always happens in the cloud, so no speech model lives on your PC.— · —
Account and sign-in	An email address, only if you choose to start the trialthe Deixis endpoint · when you start the trial	An account is required: signing in with Google, Apple, Microsoft, SSO, or email and password is a setup step on desktop and mobile. The privacy policy lists email address, first and last name and phone number as account information.Wispr · at sign-up, before the first dictation
Integrations	The finished note, and for a screenshot its file name, never the imagea URL you added yourself · on finish, only for destinations you added	Calendar, contact and directory data from Google, if you connect those; the pricing page lists calendar and Slack connectivity and AI-tool integration on every plan.Wispr, and the services you connect · only when you connect them

The same table for every tool we have measured

Before you switch

Who should not switch

If you dictate in a language other than English, stay with Wispr Flow: Deixis's speech models are English models. If the calendar and Slack connections, or the shared team dictionary, are the reason you pay, those are things Deixis does not have. On Windows, Deixis needs a 64-bit Windows 10 or 11 PC from 2013 or later; on an older processor it will not start at all. And there is no Linux build.

Making the switch

Five minutes, and most of it is the one download.

The key

Wispr Flow's help centre gives Ctrl+Win as its push-to-talk key on Windows, so your hands already know the gesture: hold Ctrl+Win, speak, release. Its setup guide says a double-tap of that key toggles hands-free mode, and Deixis works the same way: double-tap the chord to keep listening, and double-tap again to stop. The chord can be remapped in Settings if Ctrl+Win is taken on your machine.

The speech model

First launch shows one Download button. Press it, wait for a file about the size of a short video, and you are dictating. Settings offers a second, larger model that is more accurate and slower to decode, and it swaps in without a restart. That download is the only thing a fresh install fetches apart from an update check, and the update check sends nothing but the request.

Your words

There is no importer for a Wispr Flow dictionary, so add words as you go: select one anywhere, press Ctrl+Win+D, done. Five vocabulary packs ship in the box, for software, finance, business, medicine and law, and switching one on takes a click. A word Deixis keeps mishearing gets a replacement rule, corrected once and fixed forever. Your dictionary is a plain file, so you can also paste a whole list into it in one go.

Cleanup

Deixis works with no provider: rules on your PC tidy filler words, punctuation and casing. If you liked the polish a language model gives every sentence, Settings → Cleanup is one choice: let Deixis run it in the cloud, run a model on your own machine, or use your own key. Whichever you pick, what leaves your PC is the short list in the table on this page, and nothing on it is audio.

Your account

Deixis has nothing to cancel because there was never an account. Your Wispr Flow subscription, and whatever it stored under Dictation Cloud Storage, are managed on Wispr's side, in its own settings.

Before you ask

Questions people search for

Is Wispr Flow safe?

Its pages say data is encrypted in transit and at rest and list its security certifications, and they also say transcription always happens in the cloud, on servers hosted with a US cloud provider, with the audio decrypted there to be transcribed. During onboarding, "Improve the model for everyone" is pre-selected, which lets your audio, transcripts and edits be used for training unless you choose the other option. Whether that is safe enough is your call; what is certain is that your voice leaves your machine, and with Deixis it never does, under any setting.

Does Wispr Flow read your screen?

Its Context Awareness help page says the feature is on by default on Mac and Windows, and that the context it sends with each dictation request includes the text in the box around your cursor, on-screen text, file and variable names in coding apps, the apps in your session, a screenshot and conversation history. It describes Windows support as partial, with conversation context, element descriptions and IDE handling Mac-only for now, and does not say which of the other items the Windows app sends; you can turn the feature off under Settings → Data and Privacy. Deixis sends the transcript, your vocabulary, the name of the app and the field, and your last utterance in that field, only if you have switched cloud cleanup on; never a screenshot, never the text on your screen, never the window title.

Does Wispr Flow work on Windows?

Yes: 64-bit Windows 10 or 11, and not on ARM machines, per its system requirements page. Its notetaker is Mac only. Deixis on Windows is the whole product: a 64-bit Windows 10 or 11 PC from 2013 on, one small installer, and meetings recorded, transcribed and speaker-named on that PC. The same engine runs on the Mac, the iPhone and Android, with the recognition on the device every time.

Does Wispr Flow work offline?

Not for dictation: its privacy page says transcription always happens in the cloud, to give the best speed and accuracy. Deixis recognises speech on your own PC, so with no cloud endpoint configured it dictates, records and transcribes meetings, and grabs screens with no connection at all.

Is Wispr Flow free?

There is a free plan, capped at 2,000 words a week on desktop, then Pro at $15 per user a month or $12 a month billed yearly. Deixis is free forever for everything that runs on your PC, with no cap and no account; Pro is $49 a year, or $10 a month, for the managed cloud extras.

What is the best Wispr Flow alternative for Windows?

If the thing you want to change is where your voice goes, Deixis: the same hold-a-key dictation with the recognition on your own processor, no account, no word cap, and screen grabs, recordings and meetings on the same key, on your PC, your Mac and your phone. If you need a hundred languages, or the calendar and Slack connections, Wispr Flow still wins, and this page says so above.

Hold a key. Speak. Keep working.

Deixis is free, needs no account, and runs on your own PC. Everything on this page is in the current release.

Download for Windows Every byte that leaves

v0.9.0 · 64‑bit Windows 10/11 · 46.7 MB · nothing else to install

Facts about Wispr Flow checked on 2026-09-05 against wisprflow.ai. Deixis facts are from its README for the current release. Something out of date? Tell us.